Big Powers Jockey for Oil in Central Asia ; the US, Russia, China, and Others Have a Military or Business Presence

Article excerpt

Here at Dushanbe airport, French Air Force planes sit on the
tarmac, their blue, white, and red roundels looking a bit
incongruous against the backdrop of the soaring, snowy Pamir
Mountains.

A dozen miles away, Indian engineers are quietly reconstructing a
former Soviet airfield. In central Tajikistan, Russia maintains a
motorized infantry division of 10,000 men at a sprawling outpost,
while the US is reportedly training Tajik forces in counterterrorism
techniques.

They're all piling into a modern replay of the 19th-century
"Great Game," in which the contending Russian and British Empires
vied for land and influence amid these same Central Asian desert
wastes and towering mountain peaks.

In this round, the main prize is control over pipelines that will
deliver an estimated 5 percent of the world's dwindling energy
reserves to market. And the players are far more diverse: In
addition to the US, China, France, and India, the region's five post-
Soviet states are getting into the game, giving the local hazards
that stalk them - including faltering authoritarian governments,
rising Islamic militancy, and a wave of drug trafficking that
originates in the poppy fields of Afghanistan - a new international
dimension.

"The game in Central Asia is very much about competition between
the powers," says Dmitri Suslov, an expert with the independent
Council on Foreign and Defense Policy in Moscow. "But this time the
countries of the region are players themselves, using the
contradictions between Russia, the US, the European Union, and China
for their own benefit. It's becoming very complicated."

It's not only Tajikistan where world powers have taken to flying
their flags, especially since the 9/11 attacks focused attention on
the dangers of state failure in this volatile region.

In neighboring Kyrgyzstan, gleaming rows of US Air Force KC-135
midair refueling tankers line the airstrip at Manas International
Airport; Russia flies Sukhoi-27 fighters from its base at nearby
Kant. China is said to be eyeing its own Kyrgyz military presence.
And Germany stations 300 troops with helicopters at Termez, in next-
door Uzbekistan.

West seeks Russia-free energy

On Tuesday and Wednesday this week, a delegation of European
Union officials, led by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter
Steinmeier, is meeting with foreign ministers of five Central Asian
states in the Kazakh capital, Astana, to discuss deepening ties. The
EU has declared an "Energy Dialogue" with Central Asia a key foreign
policy goal, as part of a general effort to wean Europe from a
perceived overdependence on Russian supplies. That coincides with US
purposes in the region and, experts say, this is the main play to
watch as the game develops.

"The Central Asian countries are still very much locked into the
Russian pipelines and infrastructure and must sell their oil and gas
to world markets on Russian terms," says Ivan Saffranchuk, Moscow
director of the independent World Security Institute. "The Western
idea is that these countries will have real sovereignty only when
they are able to independently sell their resources."

The US strongly backed the recently opened $4 billion Baku-
Ceyhan pipeline, which carries Caspian oil to the West without
Russian participation. Mr. Suslov says that Washington is urging
hydrocarbon-rich Kazakhstan to break free from Russia's grip and
build links to the Baku- Ceyhan network. China has recently managed
to buy a key Kazakh oil company and in 2005 a 1,000-mile pipeline
began carrying Kazakh crude to China. It reportedly has plans to
extend the pipeline westward by 2011 to funnel Caspian oil eastward.

Fears of instability, Islamist influence

Two years ago this week a lightning revolution overthrew Kyrgyz
President Askar Akayev, and the little mountain state has been mired
in unrest ever since. A few weeks later a putative Islamist uprising
at Andijon, Uzbekistan, was brutally put down by forces loyal to
Uzbek strongman Islam Karimov. …

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